With me it was usually the same thing.
6 months looking for members...most of it trying to find a keyboard player and a vocalist with their own p.a.
6 months of practicing in somebody's basement, maybe twice a week cause that's all anybody could manage.
6 months of looking to book gigs and not being able to find any and not being able to get a booking agent.
6 months to realize that all the band really knows what to play are cover tunes and nobody can write after all.
Then somewhere about 2 years into it either somebody gets discouraged and quits or personality conflicts cause a huge blowup.
Then the whole process starts over again with the next band.
After about 25 years of this you finally resign yourself to the fact that even though you can play better than van halen, you're never going to get signed, or hear yourself on the radio or even play live in front of more than 300 people and you yell at your kids, kick the dog and crawl back into bed with your fat wife.